So, THAT's why they call them "Challenges"

I love entering challenges at various sites, but some of them just befuddle me. I must admit, I am having the hardest time with the Western themed challenges at the Outlawz. I don't make many cards or projects with that theme and I find it to be really, really difficult. Then you add more specific rules on top of that, like certain colors or styles, and, well...I'm kinda lost. My husband didn't call me his navigator for nothing, though. If I try hard enough, I will find my way again. Sometimes, I take a few detours first. Like this card. It's my detour. I started out intending to enter another card for the Clean and Simple challenge. Then I realized I was layering too much to fit that theme. I remembered that the color challenge was red and white with one other color. I thought "aha! My other color will be black." Um, yeah. I stood back at one point and looked at my card, which made me realize that I'd already added this straw-looking stuff. Um, not black. Well, crap. Detour again. Luckily for me, I had not added any sentiments yet, so I was able to turn this into a birthday card. The interior sentiment is all about having a rockin' birthday. I mean, even country and western stars rock out, right? Carrie Underwood, Shania Twain, even Faith Hill, to name a few. Crossover stars and all of that. Now I've completed my detour and from here, hopefully, I can go back home to my initial challenge: the clean and simple one. Or maybe I'll just detour back to the color challenge. I'll figure it out eventually!

Some deets on this super heavy card (man, I should have used bazzill black cardstock, instead of the stuff from the value pack). The black star folds up at the crease you can see in the top, so that the white star is the back of the card as well as the outline on the front. Does that make sense? It's a big card, so thank goodness I have 7.5x7.5 envelopes. I cut the stars with my Creative Memories cutting system. The image is cut out with a spellbinders die and the sentiment is from Papertrey Ink. I cut it out with a EK Success punch. I got the straw paper at a yard sale and I am sad to say that I am almost out. I like the texture it adds. In this case, it reminded me of one of those straw cowboy hats. Image is colored with copics and blinged up with stardust pens. I inked the edges with my cat's eye red ink pad. The little hearts were $1 for a pack of 4 at Michael's.

Thanks for looking and taking this journey with me. I'm off to see where it leads me next!